Who is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? – Technologist

By calling on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on Thursday, November 14, to become his health secretary, president-elect Donald Trump has provided yet another illustration of his wish to shake up the establishment. An anti-vaxxer, without any scientific expertise, “RFK Jr.,” the nephew of the United States’ former president John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, has announced his intention to “clean up the corruption” that he has alleged exists within federal food and drug regulatory agencies.

Trump has made it clear that the former environmental lawyer’s main mission will be to take on the country’s big pharmaceutical and food-processing monopolies. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to public health,” he said.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which RFK Jr. will head, if his appointment is confirmed by the Senate, oversees key areas such as drug, vaccine and food safety, medical research and the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which are crucial for American health insurance coverage. According to the president-elect, Kennedy will be responsible for ensuring that Americans are protected “from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming health crisis in this country.”

Committed to environmental protection

Robert Francis Kennedy Junior, 70, has always been a unique figure in the world of US political figures. Robbed of his father, Robert Kennedy, a candidate for the White House who was assassinated in 1968, when he was 14, he studied at Harvard, where he left classmates with memories of him as a small-time drug dealer – and big-time drug user. In 1984, he was arrested for possession of heroin. He turned his life around, thanks to his involvement in the environmentalist movement. As a volunteer with the environmental organization Riverkeeper, he sued polluters of New York’s Hudson River. For 20 years, he was acclaimed by the American environmental movement, notably for having taken up the fight against agrochemical company Monsanto and its herbicide, Roundup.

Over the years of fighting against multinational companies, he has stood out for positions that have become increasingly far removed from common sense. His reputation has been tarnished by his publicly stated belief that vaccination could be a cause of autism in children, an assertion for which the medical community has never found any scientific basis.

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